Leviticus 26
26
Blessings for Obeying the Lord
The Lord said:
1 #
Lv 19.3,4;
Ex 20.4; Dt 5.8; 16.21,22; 29.16-18. I am the Lord your God! So don't make or worship idols or images. 2Respect the Sabbath and honor the place where I am worshiped, because I am the Lord.
3 #
Dt 11.13-15; 28.1-14. Faithfully obey my laws, 4and I will send rain to make your crops grow and your trees produce fruit. 5Your harvest of grain and grapes will be so abundant, that you won't know what to do with it all. You will eat and be satisfied, and you will live in safety. 6I will bless your country with peace, and you will rest without fear. I will wipe out the dangerous animals and protect you from enemy attacks. 7You will chase and destroy your enemies, 8even if there are only 5 of you and 100 of them, or only 100 of you and 10,000 of them. 9I will treat you with such kindness that your nation will grow strong, and I will also keep my promises to you. 10Your barns will overflow with grain each year. 11I will live among you and never again look on you with disgust. 12#2 Co 6.16. I will walk with you—I will be your God, and you will be my people. 13I am the Lord your God, and I rescued you from Egypt, so that you would never again be slaves. I have set you free; now walk with your heads held high.
Punishment for Disobeying the Lord
The Lord said:
14-15 #
Dt 28.15-68. If you disobey me and my laws, and if you break our agreement, 16I will punish you terribly, and you will be ruined. You will be struck with incurable diseases and with fever that leads to blindness and depression. Your enemies will eat the crops you plant, 17and I will turn from you and let you be destroyed by your attackers. You will even run at the very rumor of attack. 18Then, if you still refuse to obey me, I will punish you seven times for each of your sins, 19until your pride is completely crushed. I will hold back the rain, so the sky above you will be like iron, and the ground beneath your feet will be like copper. 20All of your hard work will be for nothing—and there will be no harvest of grain or fruit.
21If you keep rebelling against me, I'll punish you seven times worse, just as your sins deserve! 22I'll send wild animals to attack you, and they will gobble up your children and livestock. So few of you will be left that your roads will be deserted.
23If you remain my enemies after this, 24I'll remain your enemy and punish you even worse. 25War will break out because you broke our agreement, and if you escape to your walled cities, I'll punish you with horrible diseases, and you will be captured by your enemies. 26You will have such a shortage of bread, that ten women will be able to bake their bread in the same oven. Each of you will get only a few crumbs, and you will go hungry.
27Then if you don't stop rebelling, 28I'll really get furious and punish you terribly for your sins! 29In fact, you will be so desperate for food that you will eat your own children. 30I'll destroy your shrines and tear down your incense altars, leaving your dead bodies piled on top of your idols. And you will be disgusting to me. 31I'll wipe out your towns and your places of worship and will no longer be pleased with the smell of your sacrifices. 32Your land will become so desolate that even your enemies who settle there will be shocked when they see it. 33After I destroy your towns and ruin your land with war, I'll scatter you among the nations.
34-35While you are prisoners in foreign lands, your own land will enjoy years of rest and refreshment, as it should have done each seventh year when you lived there. 36-37In the land of your enemies, you will tremble at the rustle of a leaf, as though it were a sword. And you will become so weak that you will stumble and fall over each other, even when no one is chasing you. 38Many of you will die in foreign lands, 39and others of you will waste away in sorrow as the result of your sins and the sins of your ancestors.
40-41Then suppose you realize that I turned against you and brought you to the land of your enemies because both you and your ancestors had stubbornly sinned against me. If you humbly confess what you have done and start living right, 42#Gn 28.13,14; Gn 26.3,4; Gn 17.7,8. I'll keep the promise I made to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will bless your land 43and let it rest during the time that you are in a foreign country, paying for your rebellion against me and my laws.
44 #
3 Macc 6.15. No matter what you have done, I am still the Lord your God, and I will never completely reject you or become absolutely disgusted with you there in the land of your enemies. 45While nations watched, I rescued your ancestors from Egypt so that I would be their God. Yes, I am your Lord, and I will never forget our agreement.
46Moses was on Mount Sinai when the Lord gave him these laws and teachings for the people of Israel.
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Leviticus 26: CEVDCI
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Contemporary English Version, Second Edition (CEV®)
© 2006 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.
Leviticus 26
26
Covenant blessings
1You must not make any idols, and do not set up any divine image or sacred pillar. You must not place any carved#26.1 Heb uncertain stone in your land, bowing down to it, because I am the LORD your God. 2You must keep my sabbaths and respect my sanctuary; I am the LORD.
3If you live according to my rules, keep my commands, and do them, 4I will give you rain at the proper time, the land will produce its yield, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit. 5Your threshing season will last until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will last until planting time. You will eat your fill of food and live securely in your land. 6I will grant peace in the land so that you can lie down without anyone frightening you. I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword will pass through it. 7You will chase your enemies, and they will fall before you in battle. 8Five of you will chase away a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase away ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you in battle. 9I will turn my face to you, will make you fruitful and numerous, and will keep my covenant with you. 10You will still be eating the previous year’s harvest when the time will come to clear it out to make room for the new! 11I will place my dwelling#26.11 Or tabernacle among you, and I will not despise you. 12I will walk around among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people. 13I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt’s land—who brought you out from being Egypt’s slaves. I broke your bonds and made you stand up straight.
Covenant curses
14But if you do not obey me and do not carry out all these commands— 15if you reject my rules and despise my regulations, not doing all my commands and breaking my covenant— 16then I will do the following to you:
I will bring horrific things:#26.16 Precise nature of the diseases uncertain wasting diseases and fevers that make the eyes fail and drain life away.
You will plant seed for no reason because your enemies will eat the food.
17I will turn my face against you: you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you; and you will run away even when no one is chasing you.
18If, despite all that, you still do not obey me, I will punish you for your sins seven more times: 19I will destroy your prideful power. I will turn your sky to iron and your land to bronze 20so that your strength will be spent for no reason: your land will not produce its yield, and the trees of the land won’t produce their fruit.
21If you continue to oppose me and are unwilling to obey me, I will strike you for your sins seven more times: 22I will send wild animals against you, and they will kill your children and destroy your livestock. They will make you so few in number that your roads will seem deserted.
23If, despite these things, you still do not accept my discipline and continue to oppose me, 24then I will continue to oppose you. I will strike you for your sins seven more times: 25I will bring the sword against you, avenging the breaking of the covenant.#26.25 Or executing covenant vengeance If you retreat into your cities, I will send a plague on you, and you will be handed over to the enemy. 26When I destroy your food supply, ten women will bake bread in a single oven, and they will ration out bread by weight. You will eat but will never get full.
27If, despite all this, you still do not obey me and continue to oppose me, 28then I will continue to oppose you—with anger! I will punish you for your sins seven more times: 29You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. 30I will eliminate your shrines, chop down your incense altars, and pile your dead bodies on the dead bodies of your idols. I will despise you. 31I will turn your cities into ruins, I will devastate your sanctuaries, and I will not smell the soothing smells of your offerings. 32I will personally devastate the land so much that your enemies who resettle it will be astonished by it. 33I will scatter you among the nations. I will unsheathe my sword against you. Your land will be devastated and your cities will be ruins.
34At that time, while it is devastated and you are in enemy territory, the land will enjoy its sabbaths. At that time, the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35During the whole time it is devastated, it will have the rest it didn’t have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
36I will bring despair into the hearts of those of you who survive in enemy territory. Just the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to running, and they will run scared as if running from a sword! They will fall even when no one is chasing them! 37They will stumble over each other as they would before a sword, even though no one is chasing them! You will have no power to stand before your enemies. 38You will disappear among the nations—the land of your enemies will devour you. 39Any of you who do survive will rot in enemy territory on account of their guilty deeds. And they will rot too on account of their ancestors’ guilty deeds.
Covenant and restoration
40But if they confess their and their ancestors’ guilt for the wrongdoing they did to me, and for their continued opposition to me— 41which made me oppose them, so I took them into enemy territory—or if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make up for their guilt, 42then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will also remember my covenant with Isaac. And my covenant with Abraham. And I will remember the land. 43The land will be absent of them and will be enjoying its sabbaths while it lies devastated, free of them. They will be making up for their guilty deeds for no other reason than the fact that they rejected my regulations and despised my rules. 44But despite all that, when they are in enemy territory, I will not reject them or despise them to the point of totally destroying them, breaking my covenant with them by doing so, because I am the LORD their God. 45But for their sake I will remember the covenant with the first generation, the ones I brought out of Egypt’s land in the sight of all the nations, in order to be their God; I am the LORD.
46These are the rules, regulations, and instructions between the LORD and the Israelites that he gave through Moses on Mount Sinai.
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